I squinted and sat up just enough to see over my husband’s shoulder. 4:32. I collapsed back on the pillow, my mind both fuzzy and racing. In it was what seemed to be at least a full chapter of a detailed story that I had absolutely no idea existed before I’d gone to sleep.

A woman watched a group of giggling teenage girls walk down the street of the small town. When they thought no one was near, the girls each quickly and gracefully placed white linen pieces of cloth, somewhat like the large collars of habited nuns, over their heads and drew the slitted fabric down around their shoulders, past their hips, and then stepped fluidly out of them. As her eyes trained back up from the girls’ feet, the woman realized that the girls were now all suddenly wearing different outfits than they had been seconds before. Laughing delightedly at their quick change miracle, the girls walked en masse into a shop.

The woman hastily crossed the street and followed them into the building, wondering if she had just seen what she thought she had, but also knowing without a doubt that she did.

Deliberately positioning herself so the girls couldn’t help but overhear, the woman started chatting with the shopkeeper, subtly but carefully inserting some specific details about her own young daughter’s behaviour – details that were sure to catch the attention of the young teenagers. The previously cool and snobbish group looked at her, uncomfortable and wary, before they wordlessly agreed that it was time to leave – time to get away from her. She tried not to be threatening as she followed after them, and as she struggled to call out the right combination of casual words to entice the oldest, and most quietly confident girl of the group, to stop and listen to her cautiously.

The threads of sleep were getting thinner and thinner and I raced to try to retell the story to my awake self, before they faded and disappeared completely. I lost a big chunk of it here, though. There was something about the two females walking toward a marshy field by the train tracks, and finding a place to sit for a few minutes, preferably by a clear little puddle of water, and not near a disgusting polluted one.

The woman was talking about her daughter and using that connection to ask the girl questions about the clothing trick, about her life, about things that the girl had to try to carefully weigh and decide how much to answer, before she did. The woman was excited but tried to keep it in check and play the role, to show the girl that she already knew everything and that talking about it was entirely safe and natural. She had to fake it properly, otherwise she’d scare this precious resource away, and be left confused and alone with her unknowing, yet again.

As I try to type this – these last, faint whispers of the dream – it’s hard not to feel frustrated that they’re almost entirely gone, and that something so cool can’t be hugged closer and kept. The only thing I remember now was the dramatic closing line of the mental film, where the young teenager, still wary but warming swiftly to the woman in the excitement of finding someone so much like herself, tentatively asked, “Now can I ask you a question?”

And the woman replied, “Sure, of course.”

“When did you first realize that you were a witch?”

The woman broke the girl’s gaze for the first time, and looked down at her own hands, clasped tightly in her lap. “Right now.”

 

 

I’ve got to stop eating espresso cheesecake late at night. Or else, maybe… start eating more of it?